Concrete Crickets by Michael Dory is a part of Conflux 2007 and will be introduced in a special preview on September 5, 2007 at 7pm at Location One in SoHo. Info, directions, etc at: dorkbot.org.

Graffiti is one of the most powerful and most personal displays in the urban experience, and can be used to make statements, tag territory, spread messages — urban markup language in practice. However, the output is nearly always visual in nature, making this experience one-dimensional. Furthermore, rarely does the work have a brain of its own, and is usually incapable of reacting to anybody observing it.
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Seventeen Unsung Songs: East of Odyssey (37, 89, 32) by Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona) :: Press launch: September 1; Public launch: September 8 (through through November 1) to coincide with an Ars Electronica linkup performance.

Odyssey presents a site specific installation by Australian artist Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona in Second Life). Occupying most of an entire sim, Seventeen Unsung Songs is an artwork consisting of one large central piece, with 16 smaller pieces that are distributed throughout a forested landscape. These are interactive, immersive audio visual works based on a 16 tone rational scale, which Adam Nash devised. Viewers experience the exhibition by wandering through the wooded sim to find pieces like “the Moaning Columns of Longing” nestled in a grove of Euclyptus.
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espaceSONO audio :: SAT [GALERIE] :: 1201 St. Laurent, Montréal :: September 5 - October 5, 2007.

The espaceSONO audio.listening.lab is a global curatorial project that reflects the diversity of approaches and practices in sound-art today. Some forty artists from ten countries are represented, each offering a unique foray into sound. The works are designed to be heard in a focused listening environment over headphones. Two installations open new ways of containing sound-art while a series of performances demonstrate the versatility of artists engaged in sound exploration as they shift from composition to performance.
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You can now download, for free, Joseph Nechvatal’s 28 min. viral symphOny mp3. The fully embodied CD (with 78 min. audio and art work) is for sale at http://www.cdemusic.org/
as is Media Myth TELLUS 20, a collection of recuperated audio artifacts by Pierre Perret, Randy Greif, Minoy, Crawling with Tarts, Violence and the Sacred, Silent but Deadly, and others, chosen by Joseph Nechvatal.

Post-conceptual digital artist and theoretician Joseph Nechvatal pushes his experimental investigations into the blending of computational virtual spaces and the corporeal world into the sonic register. Realtime “field Continue reading

21 cities at once performed: a performative, global network where participants create public intersections to occur simultaneously around the world :: CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: ATLANTA | BARCELONA | BERLIN | CAIRO | CHICAGO | LEIPZIG | HELSINKI | JOHANNESBURG | LOS ANGELES | MEXICO CITY | NEW YORK CITY l PORTLAND | REYKJAVÍK | SAN FRANCISCO | SANTIAGO | SAO PAOLO SEOUL | SINGAPORE | STOCKHOLM | WASHINGTON DC | TOKYO.

On Friday, September 14, 2007, at 6pm EST, we invite you to participate in a global performance event. Please consider contributing to a series of projects happening simultaneously in 21 cities around the world as part of Conflux Festival. It doesn’t need to be difficult: you could sweep your kitchen, read a story to a group of children or have a party. You might sneak love notes into the pockets of jeans at the Gap or direct a walking tour of your neighborhood (further examples are listed in the project description below). It’s less about what you do and more about the doing, and the awareness that every participant is contributing a project at the same time. Each project will be documented and presented on www.21citiesatonceperformed.
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LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible … is a collaboration between world-renowned composer / musician SAKAMOTO Ryuichi [videos] and TAKATANI Shiro, core members of the Kyoto-based internationally active art group dumb type.

While the genesis of this piece is in SAKAMOTO Ryuichi’s opera LIFE (first performed in 1999, for which TAKATANI Shiro created the video aspects), as is evident in the title’s “fluid, invisible, inaudible …” this installation revisits the resources of sound and vision in LIFE for an entirely new deconstruction and evolution of the work. While LIFE was an experiment conducted in opera’s linear, modern form at the end of the 20th Century, LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible … is a non-linear, decentralized flow of audio and visuals which the visitors themselves enter to experience.
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In an August 24th post on Short Sharp Science, David Cohen, New Scientist features editor, speaks of the strange missions on which New Scientist writers can be sent. He goes on to tell the story of how one morning early this August he got up at the crack of dawn and drove down Death Valley highway to the Dumont Dunes (CA) – “one of only 33 known sites worldwide where dunes have been known to sing.” His mission: to hear the singing. Once there

I sat down, dug my hands into the sand and started inching down the slope, feet-first like a giant caterpillar. Nothing happened. Sure, sand was moving, but all I could hear were gentle burping noises emanating from the sand beneath my feet with every push. I checked no-one was watching (imagine the humiliation of coming all this way and not hearing a thing) then dug my arms deeper into the sand and sped up. This sucker was going to sing if I had to dig up half the dune.
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Audio Architecture - Originally written by Geoff Manaugh for Blend but not published, the following ‘article”on Muzak and urban loyalty was published in BLDG BLOG Architectural Conjecture on August 10th.

The company known as Muzak claims to provide “audio architecture” for its clients. Audio architecture may sound wonderful; the phrase may conjure up images of cathedrals made from noise – whole buildings connected by bridges of music – but, in the world of Muzak, it means something less exciting. Audio architecture, Muzak writes, is “the integration of music, voice and sound to create experiences designed specifically for your business.” Continue reading

Glass shards, glaciers, trees, hyenas, and whales Cheryl E. Leonard’s music finds its raw materials just about anywhere. Her works embrace the spectrum of musical possibilities: improvised to composed, acoustic to electronic, diaphanous to bombastic, notes to noise. These investigations often include the creation of new instruments, primarily from found materials.

In Music for Rocks and Water three performers play water and a variety of rocks, which are dripped, drizzled, poured, rolled, rocked, brushed, rubbed, stacked and even tickled. Sometimes the rocks are played underwater. Listen: Continue reading

Touch is a research project that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. Touch is not about music or anything musical at this point. Based at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway, this project is developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. There are musical potentials here.

Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural inquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions.
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